Ariel Pink - Black Ballerina (2014, from the album Pom Pom)
As a companion to our radio shows. Here, you will find writing on some of our favourite songs of the last 10 years.
Ariel Pink is the Anthony Newly of Hypnogogic pop. A problematic genius of pre Beatles UK pop culture, Newly was able to combine philosophical interior monologue, alongside natty pop tunes, experimental sound design and bawdy misogynist comedy. There’s something for everyone and everything for no-one. You can’t take one without having all the others. Wanker pop.
Black Ballerina, the second single from Pink’s eighth album Pom Pom came as a time when the free thinking libertarian edgelord began to make public pro Trump comments. Still, don’t let that detract from this huge and twisted pop banger. Plastic and as catchy as the pox, part 80s Hollywood sex farce, with Zappaesque sarcasm, and slathers of Woody Allen beta male perv. All the favorites!
Ariel here plays Shotgun Billy who is taken to a strip club and initiated by a salty seadog type with an English accent, ‘she's a topless dancer, lad,
C'mon now, don't be frightened’. Ultimately, Ariel is always the outsider, always the loser. He fucks up badly, his faltering and embarrassing attempt at communication backfiring, leading to apology and retreat. Like Morrissey before him, Ariel has a bitter outsiderness that can congeal in deeply unpleasant ways. We get a pre chorus that slathers over Condoleeza Rice and Dolly Parton, and a chorus that talks about ‘elevator manufacturers’.
What can you say? How can you deny it when you can’t stop singing it.